Euryce watched the planes repeat their looping trick, and expected them to come back in the same fashion. But instead they continued to separate, headed outwards from each other, and became specks. The roar of their engines subsided.
She felt as though she had been short-changed.
“There!” Brex shouted.
The birds whooshed back, high in the sky, trailing bright blue smoke. They circled each other tightly above the aerodrome, as if tying a complicated knot with coloured streamers.
Four of them split off in cardinal directions, the fifth — the golden leader — shot straight up.
Euryce watched the plane until it was a tiny speck, lost in the great wash of the sky. She saw the speck curve to one side, swing in a wide arc, then head back towards the planet.
The speck became a smudge, and then a recognisable shape. The pilot threw the plane into a roll, then cork-screwed, and finally looped the loop.
Euryce watched, entranced, as Roima Gotharom danced her dance of rapturous liberty in heaven’s playground.
• • •
“Can I go, Mama? Please?”
Euryce danced around the kitchen, forcing Mama to divert twice on her way from the basin to the large wooden table in the centre of the room.
Mama smiled to herself as she plonked down a colander full of greens from the vegetable garden.
“Well, I don’t know Eury. It’s on awfully late. You should really be in bed at that time.”
The bottom of the world fell away for Euryce. In that moment, only one thing mattered to her.
“But Mama, it’s only once and then she’s gone.”
“Well, I’ll have to ask your father and see what he thinks.”
As far as Euryce was concerned, that meant ‘yes’.
“Oh thank you! Thank you Mama!”
She swooped from the kitchen to the hallway, barrel-rolled along the wide corridor, and pulled a tight curve into the living room — tolerating the g-force like a true professional — before touching down in front of the twins.
“I’m going to see Roima Gotharom,” she announced.
Lasan looked up and smiled. Brex continued to take his turn at the game which was unfolding sequentially across the floor.
“Why would she want to meet you?” He said, without looking up. “You’re just a baby.”
“I’m not, I’m six.”
“Six is still a baby,” he ruled. “Barrier. Your turn.”
Lasan returned her eyes to the board, and they widened in response to Brex’s surprise move.
“I don’t care,” said Euryce. “And I am going to see her, so there.”
“She won’t want to meet a baby,” Brex insisted.
“She’s speaking at the public square,” said Lasan. She raised a piece, reconsidered, and placed it back down. “Talking about her career.”
“Oh, how boring,” said Brex. “She’s only a stunt pilot, Eury, not a Navy pilot. She’s not even MAGA. It’s not like she flies a tactical fighter. Now those are interesting.”
Despite the moments to which she had paid attention at the show, Euryce was not sure what the difference was between a tactical fighter and any other craft.
“I don’t care,” she said. She did not have many rebuttals in her repertoire. “I’m still going. Roima Gotharom is the best.”
“Best at nothing worthwhile,” Brex muttered.
“Leave her alone,” said Lasan.
“I’ll stop if you win.”
The front door opened, and Euryce leapt to her feet. She ran back to the hall and followed Papa into the kitchen.
He went and hugged Mama, kissed her, and plonked a metal cylinder down on the table. It thudded against the wood.
“Papa, Papa, can I go, can I?”
“What am I agreeing to?” He said. He laughed at her, picked her up, and swung her upside-down before planting her unceremoniously back on her feet. Her hair flopped over her eyes, and she blew it away grumpily.
“What is that?” Asked Mama. “And why is it on the kitchen table?”
“You know I can’t resist an interesting bit of salvage.”
“It’s junk then.”
“Papa…” Euryce insisted.
“Yes, my little dumpling,” he said. “What is it?”
“Mama said I can go and see Roima Gotharom. Can I Papa, can I?”
“That’s not quite what I said, now, is it Euryce?”
Papa grinned.
“I told her she would have to ask you. Roima is giving a free talk at public square from eight; something about how she dragged herself up from nothing and you can too.”
“It might be good for Eury to hear something like that.”
“Westry, that woman can talk about herself for hours. Euryce has school in the morning.”
Euryce pulled at his trouser leg with both hands and looked up at him with giant eyes, lips a-trembling.
“What about just an hour?”
She exploded with joy.
“Oh yay, I knew you would say yes!”
Papa laughed at her as she danced around the kitchen, and Mama smiled.
“I still want that thing off my table. What is it, really?”
“It was precipitated quite without precedent from the fuselage of a transiting perishables conveyor.”
Euryce had suspected for some time now that Papa used an impenetrable code with Mama when he did not want younger ears to know what he was saying. The words were gibberish to her.
“And why is it here?”
“Don’t you think it’s an interesting piece?”
“‘Piece’? No, I don’t. It should have gone back to the owner, or at least to the reclamation centre. Honestly, Westry, I don’t understand this fascination of yours. You don’t even sell any of that junk, and even if you did it’s not like we would really benefit from the extra money.”
Papa picked up the cylinder and hefted it in his hands.
“Do you know what this is, Eury?”
She shook her head.
“It’s from one of Roima Gotharom’s old planes,” he lied.
Mama stifled a laugh, covered her mouth, and turned her back.
“Oh! Can I have it Papa? Can I? I’ll put it with the others.”
“Well, I don’t know. It is very precious.”
“Oh but Papa, I’ve got so many already and it will be lonely if it’s not with the others.”
Mama made a very odd sputtering, choking sound, which thankfully turned out to be nothing more than an unexpected cough.
“Hmmm, that is true. If I let you add this to your collection, will you do all your chores?”
“Yes! Yes I will!”
He handed her the cylinder, and she took it with both hands. The weight was unexpected, and it almost took her to the floor. She wrestled her arms into a cradle around it, and leaned backwards.
The cylinder was actually many cylinders stacked inside each other, silver and bronze rings alternating at each end, with a tube through the middle. The word REFLOW was printed on the side.
“Thank you!” She said, and struggled from the kitchen.
“You are a horrible, horrible man,” she heard Mama say as she left.
What had Papa done now?
“Isn’t that why you married me?”
Euryce shuffled to her room, pushed the door open with her arm and shoulder, and stomped across the rug. She reached her dresser, heaved the cylinder up the front of it, and pushed it in amongst all the other pieces of twisted and mismatched memorabilia which Papa had cleverly inherited from Roima Gotharom herself.
Gotharom smiled down at her from the poster above the dresser, as if pleased with this new offering. In her crisp flight suit, with her well-lit golden hair, dazzling teeth, and the Kementhast Conquerors star-bursting behind her, she looked to Euryce like a goddess.
“Oh my worlds,” came a voice from the doorway. “Not another one.”
Euryce turned to face Brex.
“You know th
at’s all just junk, don’t you?” He said.
“They’re not junk, they’re mem… moma…”
“Mementos?”
“Mementos!”
He sniggered, and walked away.
Lasan replaced him.
“Why is he being so mean?” Euryce asked her.
“He’s just annoyed because you have a really interesting hobby and he doesn’t,” Lasan said. “Brex doesn’t have any heroes of his own.”
“But why does that make him mean?”
“It’s hard to explain,” Lasan said. She came into the room. “You’re only six Euryce. When you’re older you’ll understand.”
“I wish he’d just go away.”
“Don’t say that,” Lasan told her. “It might happen.”
“Good!”
“You might not like it if it did happen.”
“I would, he can go away and never come back.”
• • •
“The one thing you have to realise,” said Gotharom, “is that if you can dream it, you can do it.”
“Even if it isn’t on our path?”
Gotharom sought out the person who had called back to her from the crowd, and looked directly at him as she gave her response.
“Especially then,” she said. “I wasn’t destined for anything great, or even anything worthy of comment. But look at what I have done: my name is known across dozens of systems. And that did not just happen — I made it happen.
“There is little to be gained by sitting at home in the evenings lamenting the fact that your best-suited career choices were calculated before you could even hold a proper conversation. If you want your life to change, you have to make those changes happen yourself. And believe me; if I can do it, so can you.”
Euryce stifled a yawn. Roima’s wisdom was fascinating, and she was excited just at the very thought of being allowed to stay up late to listen to a local celebrity talk, but she was so very tired. Some of the words and ideas were difficult to understand too, but she felt all the more grown up just for hearing them. She just wished she was able to force herself to concentrate more.
A woman in a bright red dress stood up, and Gotharom turned her attention to her, indicating that she had the floor.
“How are we supposed to do that?” She asked. “I mean, obviously it worked for you, but the rest of us… we don’t have your talents.”
“A good question,” said Gotharom. “Thank you. I think the first thing you need to do is get away from this pernicious idea of ‘supposed to’. Nobody is supposed to do anything; we’re shaped by our environment and our experiences. Your goal should be to take control of that shaping process. The talents that the educational pathways highlight for you might not be the only ones you have—”
“Oh, this is nonsense,” someone shouted.
Euryce looked across the square to a man who was slouched against one of the peristyle’s many pillars. He pushed himself off from the pillar, and pointed at Gotharom.
“This is just a load of mumbo-jumbo. So anyone can do anything, yeah? So she” — he jabbed a finger at the woman in the red dress — “could become a Tanker, if she really wanted to?”
A ripple of light-hearted laughter passed through the crowd.
Gotharom let the laughter die down, focused solely on the man with the accusing finger, and waited until there was silence before she replied.
“Why not?”
“She’s a woman.”
“So?”
The man looked to Euryce as though he did not know what to say. He seemed to realise everyone was now looking at him, turned to whisper something to a companion, then faced Gotharom again with a mocking look on his face.
“It’s true you’ve come up with the obvious extreme example,” Gotharom said, stressing the ‘obvious’, “but there is not actually any reason why she shouldn’t.”
“Tell us what you’re selling,” the man shouted.
“I’m not here to sell you anything. Look, nobody is born as a Tanker. They train extremely hard. They modify their bodies through surgery, drugs, and sometimes cybernetics. That’s my whole point: that’s them making it happen.”
“Papa, what’s a Tanker?” Euryce asked.
“Tankers are very big men, Eury. Men with a mean attitude.”
“What’s an attitude?”
“It’s what your mother will have if we’re late home.”
“Oh.”
“Go on love,” the man shouted at the lady in the red dress. “Go become a Tanker. It’s easy; all you have to do is believe in yourself. Ridiculous!”
“It was your example,” Gotharom said.
Euryce could sense that Papa was becoming agitated. She had a knack for that; he was sometimes very easy to read, for an adult.
“Go back to your little ship!”
“Oh shove a cork in it, you loud-mouthed buffoon,” Papa shouted.
All heads turned their way, and Euryce tried to retreat behind Papa’s legs.
“The woman is trying to help everyone. Help you. You don’t agree with her — we get it. But it’s not your show. Do her the courtesy of letting her say her piece.”
“Come and make me,” said the man.
“Everyone, please…” said Gotharom.
“Oh why am I not surprised,” Papa shouted. “Is that the best you can do to make your point? A physical challenge?”
Papa was angry now, and Euryce had no idea what to do.
“Come on, Eury,” he said. He took her by the hand.
Euryce expected him to turn around and start heading home, but instead Papa strode through the crowd in the direction of the platform on which Gotharom was standing. He pulled Euryce with him, heading straight for her hero.
They reached the stage, and Euryce got her first close up look at Roima Gotharom. She did not look exactly as the poster had promised; her skin appeared clammy, her hair needed a good brushing out, her eyes looked tired, and her expression was one of pure bewilderment. But then Euryce was not exactly presented as she might have wished either, not for such an auspicious occasion as this.
She smiled shyly when Gotharom glanced at her, and again retreated behind Papa’s legs.
“May I?” Papa asked.
“Be my guest,” said the bemused pilot.
Papa took the slender mic from Gotharom, and turned to face the crowd.
“I might not be a formation pilot, or a celebrity,” he said, “but my life has been similar to Roima Gotharom’s in some respects. I can assure you, this lady is telling it like it is.”
“Get off the stage!”
Euryce could not tell if it was the same boorish man as before, or one of his companions, but the shout came from their direction.
Papa ignored the heckle. “I was doing the job I was prescribed for years. But do you know what? I knew I could do more. I saw gaps in the market and I came up with a way to fill those gaps. Me. No special talents, no indications from my merit assessments that I might do anything of the kind, but I did it. And do you know what? I went from a junior role in administration to being the owner of an intersystem shipping concern, in less than three Solars.”
Gotharom produced a second mic from somewhere, and joined in.
“And how did you do that?”
“Simple. The established haulage companies only provided contracted services to other large companies. If you wanted to send a package home to Shuul or Kitang or wherever, or distribute local goods in other systems, it was horrifically expensive. I supplied individuals and small businesses with a means of transporting goods economically. I never borrowed more than I could pay back, I never charged over the odds, and I built a trusted brand.”
“It probably would sound to a lot of people as though you lucked out there.”
“Roima, as I’m sure you already know, luck had nothing to do with it. You don’t build a fleet of haulers and win clients in over fifty star systems just by being lucky. It took endless hard work, and — pardon my language �
� lots of balls.”
“What was your pathway, Sir?”
“Accountancy.”
Gotharom smiled. “And, if I may ask, what is your intellectual fitness quotient?”
“Grade four.”
The crowd gasped collectively. Euryce had no idea what that meant, but they all seemed shocked that Papa had said those words. It was as if his accomplishments had been achieved in the face of some kind of crippling handicap.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, my whole point. Kindly illustrated by this gentleman here.”
When Euryce looked, expecting some new torrent of abuse to come from the edge of the crowd, she saw the man and his companions had gone.
“If I can do it, so can you!” Papa shouted. Roima laughed, as did some of the crowd, and a round of applause rewarded him.
Euryce lost herself in thought for the next twenty minutes, while Gotharom ended her talk then chatted with Papa, and the audience drifted away from the square. Before she knew what was going on, she was being propelled forwards and thrust at her hero.
“And this is your latest number one fan, Euryce.”
“Hello Euryce,” said Roima Gotharom.
“Hello,” she said, uncertainly. “I saw you in the sky.”
Even at the tender age of six, she knew that was a terrible opening line.
Gotharom smiled, glanced at Papa, and then flashed her gleaming teeth back at Euryce.
“Did you enjoy it?” She asked.
“Oh yes! I can’t wait until I’m old enough to do that!”
“And what do you want to do when you’re older?”
“I want to fly, just like you, more than anything.”
“Well then,” said Gotharom. “It’s a good job you came here this evening, isn’t it? Now you know how.”
Gotharom returned her attention to Papa, and they continued to chat. Euryce clung to Papa’s leg, her eyes now beginning to close, and she was aware that he was lifting her up and holding her against him. Her head lolled on his shoulder. She struggled to stay awake, but the soft lull of their voices was too much to fight against.
“Come on, Dumpling,” she heard Papa’s voice from far away. “Let’s get you home.”
— 06 —
A Pale Horse
“Give them some cover,” Thande shouted.
Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars) Page 69
